English actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson turned 65 on April 15, but she’s not thinking about retirement at all. It was recently announced that she is returning to the Bridget Jones comedy series alongside Renee Zellweger and Hugh Grant. Thompson starred in 2016’s Bridget Jones: Baby on the Horizon, the third installment in the franchise, where she played the gynecologist to ill-fated romantic Bridget (Renée Zellweger). The new, fourth part of the franchise is called Bridget Jones: Crazy About That Boy.
Universal will release the film on the Peacock streaming platform on Valentine’s Day – February 14, 2025, followed by an international theatrical release. The film was directed by Michael Morris. Again, the format of a diary is preserved, written wittily and grippingly with fresh humor.
Emma Thompson began her career as a comedian. She is the child of actors, her sister is also an actress. So her path was predetermined from a young age. She studied English literature at Cambridge from 1977 and joined the university’s Footlights sketch comedy troupe, becoming its first female member. The troupe also included Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, who later became her boyfriend. However, they are both too young and each has their own plans for their future. They part with good feelings that they keep over the years. It’s no coincidence that when they put a star on Emma Thompson on the Walk of Fame, she invited Hugh Laurie to give a speech.
During the filming of the BBC TV series “Fortunes of War” (1987), Emma was partnered with Kenneth Branagh and two years later they were married. They create a joint production company. Emma has acted extensively, including in the 1992 blockbuster Howards End, for which she won a BAFTA and an Oscar. In the same year, she began shooting three more films – Much Ado About Nothing, The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father. In 1995, she received her second “Oscar”, but not for a role, but for a screenplay – she adapted Jane Austen’s novel “Sense and Feelings” for the cinema.
In the same year, 1995, she broke up with Kenneth Branagh after it became clear that he had been cheating on her with their colleague Helena Bonham-Carter for several years. Emma is shocked and completely devastated by the revelation. She is accused of not being a good wife, of not bearing Kenneth a child. It took her two years to emerge from depression. Two things save her – the script of her favorite book by Jane Austen, which she is working on, and her meeting on the set of “Sense and Feelings” with the actor Greg Wise, who is 7 years her junior.
At first he courted Kate Winslet, but things didn’t work out between the two. Winslet herself directs his attention to Emma Thompson, who has just received a divorce, and the team loudly congratulates her. So there is another free woman on the set, and Wise is looking for just one, because a fortune teller predicted to him that he would meet his future wife during the filming of this film. Although they are not boyfriends while working, they later become a couple, and when Emma receives her second Oscar, for the screenplay of the film, it is Greg who is next to her on the red carpet. “He saved me,” admits the actress. In 1999, their daughter Gaia was born, and in 2003 the two got married. They are still together.
In 2018, Emma Thompson became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for achievements in the dramatic arts. But the actress doesn’t care much for awards – in her interview she admits that she keeps her Oscars in the bathroom because her apartment was small…
And her last film, which was released in 2022 – “Good luck Leo Grand!”, showed that nothing is impossible for Emma Thompson. She brilliantly played the role of a retired teacher, a widow, who hires a young gigolo to experience a real love thrill, which she has not been able to do all her life. The film was initially rejected for the Oscars, but was accepted after an appeal. At 63 years old, the actress played naked almost all the time and proved that she is not worried about her body. She has repeatedly shown herself as an opponent of plastic surgery and social networks. And for Hollywood, she is convinced that it is high time to change.
I am proud that it is a part of my life
When we were together with the extraordinary Emma Thompson in Cambridge, she said talented things, wore talented clothes, rode a talented bike and made talented spaghetti. She is a truly remarkable person, a very good friend, and I couldn’t be more proud to have her in my life. I know there will be many more successes to come.
Actor Hugh Laurie, her first love
Sensational in her role
Emma Thompson is sensational in Good Luck Leo Grand!, which relies on her enormous nervous energy as she plays a woman who wants to have good sex but still adheres to a more conservative way of thinking about sex as work. She is ashamed that she ordered the Lio Grand and at first looks for ways to save herself from the humiliation and just leave. The film is truly significant and remarkable.
Nick Allen, film critic
A supervillain armored in high fashion
Thompson (in “Cruella” – ed.) achieves cartoonish grandeur, a supervillain armored in haute couture. Every tilt of the head, sneer and sideways glance is a non-physical attack on the baroness’s enemies and underlings, some of whom don’t realize they’ve been symbolically executed until their heads fall into the basket.
Matt Zoller Seitz, film and TV critic
Adopts a boy from Rwanda
Emma Thompson and her husband Greg Wise always wanted to have another child in addition to their daughter Gaia. They make invitro attempts, unfortunately unsuccessful. It is at this point that Emma meets Rwandan refugee Tindiebua Agabu (Tindi). The boy has a hard fate. At the age of 12, he was kidnapped from his village along with his three sisters by the military, who turned them into child soldiers fighting against the government. After long trials, the 16-year-old managed to escape from Rwanda and ended up in London, in a refugee camp. Touched by his story, Emma invites the boy to her home for Christmas, then weekends, and gradually they grow closer. When Tindy comes of age, Emma and Greg adopt him.
